Kevin Mudrick's Tomato Lambic

Yes, you read that title right, a beer made with tomatoes. At this point, though, this sour is a couple years old so the fruit (or vegetable?) would have faded quite a bit. Not sure how old exactly, but I'm sure Kevin will chime in when I post this to twitter. He's very helpful like that. I'm not really sure on the base style of this either other than calling it an American Wild Ale even though he called it a lambic. I don't think he blended different years together as a homebrewer though. Maybe I'm wrong! Regardless, I've been super intrigued to try this ever since he gave it to me so I finally opened it the other night.

I thought it had a light vinegar nose with a hint of acidity while my wife thought it was super strong. Her nose is more sensitive than mine so it probably was stronger than I'm saying. Body followed the nose with a ton of vinegar and a bit of a bite in the finish. Unfortunately, there really wasn't any hint of tomato except maybe the slight acidity most likely as result of the age. Not sure if it was stronger fresh. It was also super flat and Kevin said that is why he prefers kegging his sours since you are carbing them on the spot. Honestly, it almost reminded me of a barrel sample which was kind of fun. Anyway, for a homebrew, it was pretty cool and a really neat idea. One note, but a delicious note for someone who likes acetic sours. Side comment, if you want to try a beer made with tomatoes after reading this, it seems that Tired Hands just brewed an heirloom tomato berliner weiss so that should be available soon.

On the actual blog front, I'm clearly not keeping up with it right now. I'm hoping things will settle back into routine once Pax goes into daycare but we'll see. In the mean time, bear with me and my sporadic posting and hopefully I can get things back on track in the future.

Kevin Mudrick's Flemish Barleywine

I still have two other bottles of Kevin's beer in the basement, but he suggested I drink this one sooner rather than later so I went ahead and drank it the next day. I believe this is a blend of his Flemish Red and his barleywine along with some brett for added fun. The bottle was filled from a keg which is part of the reason for the low carbonation.

Smells great. Sweet and sour with a ton of apple and berry. Super duper thick though in part due to the low carbonation. Started with a light amount of tart vinegar and cherry along with a little chocolate. As I got more used to the flavors, I realized it tasted almost exactly like black cherry soda sort of tastes with that slightly chocolate, slightly tart mix. You know what I mean? Thinking about it more, he might have mentioned that he added some cherry juice to the blend. If I'm right, that would explain some of this flavor. Don't remember though.

This was quite delicious and at 10% there was only a hint of alcohol. Really solid blend here and just a great, unique style. I feel like if this was barrel aged, it would end up similar to Lost Abbey's Angel's Share though maybe a little more tart. It even gets it its own style category since I really don't know how to label it. Thanks Kevin!

Kevin Mudrick IRS

This is the second of the bottles Kevin gave me a while ago. This time it's an imperial stout which was aged on Jim Beam soaked American oak cubes. Interesting stuff eh? At this point, it was also about seven months old.

Lots of things going on in the aroma. Chocolate and roast mainly but then some sort of, like, juicy flavor to it. Jo thought it was similar to apple juice while I thought it was sort of the flavor you get from cocoa powder at times. Different thoughts for sure. The body was pretty similar actually with some vanilla, chocolate, and more of the cocoa powder / apple juice flavor. None of the flavors were too strong or anything and they blended pretty well. Flavors became more cohesive as I drank through the bottle which was good as well.

Pretty decent imperial stout even after a year. More consistent through the whole thing than the ODD barleywine I had earlier which is nice to see. Be interesting to see how different the IRS was fresh and without the oak chips but either way I enjoyed the glass I had of this one.

Kevin Mudrick's Odd Barleywine

I recently saw Kevin at an Allagash event at Tria and he was kind enough to give me four bottles of his homebrew. I've had his stuff once before and it was really good even compared to professional stuff so I was excited to check it out. The first one I decided to open was his Odd, a barleywine. Or at least I think he named it Odd, it's what was on the cap at least!

Complex and boozy nose. Not hot or alcoholic at all, just kind of sweet and well boozy. Also figs, apples, prunes, and raisins. Impressive really. As far as carbonation, he warned me it was "Tomme Arthur" style meaning incredibly low. Honestly it was almost still which didn't put me off even though it made it quite thick. My first sip wasn't quite as impressive as the nose unfortunately. Similar flavors existed up front, but the back end was a little empty for some reason.

This sort of reminded me of a beer that was getting a little old but he said it was only from about six months ago. There was still a lot of caramel, raisin, and brown sugar and they weren't boozy at all, they just didn't last very long in each sip. If those flavors were more prevalent through every sip this would have been quite awesome but even so it was still pretty good. He has a version of this mixed with a flemish red or something that I bet is good. Hopefully the latter fills in the light emptiness from this. Looking forward to trying his oaked imperial stout some time this week!

Update: Kevin has informed me ODD is an acronym and stands for Old Draft Dodger. He may have told me that when he gave me the beer too but I clearly forgot. That makes a lot more sense though I liked the idea of naming the beer Odd.